Biggity Boy
'''''You know, Jimmy? While I can't say that you have never been responsible for helping out the town you also created or influenced the vast majority of major threats in the first place. The Yolkians only came to Retroville because of your signal. The same goes for Meldar Prime. The Nanobots, Shirley, and Evil Jimmy were all your creations. You caused the ice age. You created the sentient pants. You made the sick patch, you turned your teacher into a fifty-foot monstrosity, and you injured Santa Claus, almost ruining Christmas. The vast majority of this town's problems are caused, at least indirectly, by you. And you know what? In all honesty, that would be fine. You are very intelligent and you almost always do fix it, and in the end it's extremely unlikely that you won't end up benefiting the world a lot more than you will damage it. My children and my children's children are probably going to live in a world free of war and disease, and I'll have you to thank for that. But fuck, dude. You can't keep using your intelligence as a way to escape your humanity. I didn't ask you to say salt because I thought a customer would seriously care or because I was insecure, I did it because it made you look weird and I was trying to get you to adopt behaviors and use language that makes you come across like a normal fucking person. Everyone knows what sodium chloride is, but calling it that outside the context of a chemistry class makes you seem like someone who defines themselves solely by their intelligence, which is undeniably who you are. I know you think that there's nothing wrong with being that person, dude, but there is. Taking your IQ and deciding that it elevates you above the rest of the planet is an awful decision that will lead to a life filled with misery and alienation. It will color every interaction you ever have and make it impossible to have real friends or relationships. I’m not saying that you won’t have any. But they won’t hold any meaning to you, and they certainly won’t bring you any happiness. Sure, you’ll probably manage a pity-fuck or two your sophomore year of college after giving some drunk sorority girl a jetpack ride, but it’ll bring you nothing but emptiness. Maybe you’ll eventually abandon women altogether and decide that “your true love is science”, secretly seething inside whenever you see a guy like Nick or Bolbi getting married to someone he really cares about, who cares about him. You’ll say I’m exaggerating, but dude, look at how you treat the people in your life now. Carl and Sheen, quirks aside, really do see you as a friend, and they’d go through some serious shit if it meant helping you out of a scrape. Can you say that you see them the same way, as anything other than the only two kids your age willing to put up with your ridiculous ego? What have you ever done for them? Inventing doesn’t count, dude. Even when you build something for someone else, you’re really doing that for YOU. Every llama-bot or Ultra Lord simulator is only created with the expectation of further praise. They’re not friends to you. They’re worshippers. And your parents? Lord, the way you treat them. You think I’ve got folks that care about me the way your mom and dad do, working in a shithole like this? I wish. Everyday your dad watches you scarf down the dinner your mom slaved to make for you and prays that you might think about spending some fucking time with him instead of disappearing into your lab to do god knows what. They watch you toy with dimensional-warping science that they can’t wrap their minds around on a daily basis and you laugh at them for worrying about you. Have you ever played catch with your dad, Jimmy? Ever asked him how his day at work was? You don't have a clue what I'd do for a dad like yours in my life, dude. What about your mom? Why not invent something that’ll make her life easier instead of gallivanting around the Bermuda Triangle to play with fucking seaweed? We both know the reason. She would thank you for it, she’d be happy to imagine a version of you that thought for an instant about the needs of another person, but she wouldn’t call you the greatest thing in the universe for it like your friends do. And in Neutron’s world, whoever doesn’t do that might as well not exist. Ignore me if you want. Keep going the way you’re going, and I’ll see you in thirty years, lugging around sixteen Nobel prizes in your pockets as if they could substitute for a lifetime’s worth of human love and interaction. You’ve always mocked Calamitus for his inability to finish what he started, but the man had a wife and a daughter that tolerated him enough to want to stay in his life through everything, and at the rate you’re going I’d be amazed if you could manage the same with Goddard. The rest of Retroville, Jimmy, they’ll never be able to do what you do. They’ll never be able to invent rockets or solve cold fusion or add three numbers together. But they will find genuine friendship and love, and they will call it salt, and despite everything you accomplish you’ll only be remembered as nothing more than the man who wouldn’t. Who couldn’t, perhaps. Get out, dude. You’re fired.'''''